The trouble with being Sarah Kaufman in a Ronda Rousey world

If you were going to trade places with any female fighter, you probably would choose Ronda Rousey.

Let’s just be honest here. Not only is Rousey the current Strikeforce 135-pound women’s champ, but she’s also an Olympic medalist who’s barreling down the path toward fame and fortune, with her winning smile and her flowing blond locks showing up everywhere from TMZ to an opening-bell photo op at the New York Stock Exchange.

You probably would not choose to be Sarah Kaufman, and I don’t blame you.

That’s not because Kaufman isn’t a good fighter (she’s an excellent one) or a good person (she’s an awesome one). But, if we’re looking at the cold hard facts, she’s probably never going to get rich at this MMA stuff, and she has about as much chance as gracing the cover of “ESPN the Magazine” as she does of being elected Prime Minister.

She knows it, too. She also knows why Rousey, whom she faces in the main event of Saturday night’s “Strikeforce: Rousey vs. Kaufman” event on Showtime (and on Super Channel in Kaufman’s home country of Canada), has more money and more fame. She knows that, financially, she could benefit from acting a little more like Rousey – an outspoken figure who conducts herself as if the worst thing someone could think about her is nothing at all – and a little less like, well, herself. But, even knowing this, she’s not going to do it. Contrary to what you might think, it’s not because she doesn’t care about the money.

“I love money,” Kaufman told me when I talked to her on Wednesday morning for MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). “And I love getting paid.”

Apparently she doesn’t love it enough. If she did, she might have done more to sell this fight, to follow the blueprint that was laid out for her by the Rousey-Miesha Tate fight earlier this year. But she hasn’t. That’s because, as Kaufman put it, she’s “a purist.”

The thing is, if you want to find the purists in your city, don’t bother walking around up by where the big houses are. There aren’t a lot of purists on the Forbes lists. Purists are people who define themselves in opposition to something else – who tell you upfront what they aren’t willing to do. For Kaufman, that list includes talking trash and chasing fame and stripping down on the cover of magazines. She became a fighter because she liked fighting – not because she wanted to be a celebrity.

In theory, that should be just fine. In practice, this business (maybe even this society) favors the lightning rod ahead of the purist. We have to wait until Saturday to find out whether Rousey is the better fighter, but we already know she’s the bigger draw.

And say what you will about Rousey’s PR ploys; you have to admit they’re effective. She’s the reason UFC President Dana White is suddenly more interested in women’s MMA. She’s also the reason that, in all likelihood, Kaufman will have a much bigger audience for this fight than she did back when she was the Strikeforce champ. Skill sells, but, especially in the women’s version of a sport marketed mainly to men, looks and personality are the more reliable moneymakers.

So where does that leave Kaufman? For one, it leaves her in a situation where she has reason to suspect that the people signing her checks might not be all that excited about the prospect of her regaining the title.

“I think it’s pretty clear that Zuffa and Dana White especially, they love Ronda,” Kaufman said. “She’s on the edge. She’s not the typical pretty girl because she kind of has a mouth on her and she’ll say stuff that’s inappropriate. Dana kind of likes that. He likes someone who’s really going to make waves, regardless of whether they’re good or bad. … It makes Dana’s job easier and Zuffa’s job easier if she’s making people write headlines about her, so of course Dana likes Ronda.”

Kaufman, on the other hand? Without her hands wrapped and her hair in braids, it’s questionable whether White would even be able to pick her out of a lineup. No matter what she does, she’s probably never going to be that superstar fighter. She could throttle Rousey in the first round, and it still wouldn’t guarantee her a spot on “Conan.” That’s just the way it is in women’s MMA right now, and Kaufman knows it. That it hasn’t changed anything about her approach to this fight or her career in general is, depending on your perspective, either very admirable or very financially unsound. It also might not be a choice because when it comes to certain personality traits, you have to go with whatever you’ve got. Fortunately, the stuff Kaufman doesn’t have might be offset in this fight by the stuff she does. Sounds weird, I know, but allow me to explain.

If you ask Kaufman, she’ll tell you that the big mistake Tate made was letting Rousey inside her head. She got mad and she fought mad, Kaufman said, which only made it easier for Rousey to do exactly what she wanted to do, both as a fighter and as a public personality.

“If Miesha hadn’t played along with that, Ronda wouldn’t be nearly as big as she is now,” Kaufman said. “That took two people. Miesha played perfectly into what Ronda was trying to accomplish. [Rousey] got into Miesha’s head, and that went a long way toward making her the sensation that she is now.”

It also helped that Rousey managed to snag Tate in her signature submission – the armbar. But the fact Tate refused to tap to it in a timely fashion, either due to pride or rage or some combination of the two, only furthered Rousey’s fame. The gruesome image of her turning Tate’s arm into a twist-tie garnered far more attention than your basic armbar followed by a simple tap or two would have. By refusing to give in, Tate only aided her rival’s rise to prominence, according to Kaufman. She also paid a heavy price for the privilege, which is something a thoroughly reasonable Canadian like Kaufman still can’t understand.

“I thought it was ridiculous,” Kaufman said of that finish. “It’s a fight. If you’re caught in something, you’re caught. Don’t let it damage the rest of your career. Miesha can say her arm is fine and healthy, but it’s never going to be the same.”

Of course, that is the position that a reasonable person takes. That’s the viewpoint of someone who can take passion and pride out of the decision-making process and realize that if you’re going to lose anyway, you might as well lose in a way that does not mangle your tendons. Tate couldn’t reach that conclusion in time, maybe for the same reasons that she couldn’t resist taking the bait during the pre-fight war of words.

Kaufman doesn’t have that problem. She might not be dripping with charisma, but that same even-keeled level-headedness makes it almost impossible to get inside her head. You aren’t going to trash-talk Kaufman into making a mistake because Kaufman doesn’t do trash-talk – not even when it might help her career.

Is there room in women’s MMA for a fighter like that, especially at the top? It’s hard to say. Even the female fighters who aren’t crazy about how Rousey got to where she is will admit that they’re grateful for anything that brings more attention to the division. By that reasoning, a Kaufman victory might actually be counterproductive. It would take the belt away from the most marketable female fighter since Gina Carano, and replace her with a self-described purist who has little to no interest in all those non-fighting aspects of a fighter’s life.

In a way, that almost seems like a bad development for everyone. But then, it doesn’t really matter. Promoters and fans and reporters might be swayed by all the stuff that happens before and after, but the fight itself is the realm of the purist. The fight doesn’t care who should win or even who deserves to win.

For someone like Kaufman, who has eschewed all the extracurriculars to the detriment of her fame and her wallet, that may be the last great thing about this sport. She probably won’t get rich regardless of what happens on Saturday night. But she could still get the win and the belt, for whatever it’s worth once it’s off Rousey’s waist.

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